


Old Souls

by AnotherShotofBourbon



Series: Soulmates [2]
Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: F/F, Reincarnation, Surreal, the nature of souls, this is gonna be a weird one, what actually is carried over when you get reincarnated, who were your past lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-10
Updated: 2015-04-12
Packaged: 2018-03-22 06:10:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3718075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnotherShotofBourbon/pseuds/AnotherShotofBourbon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Avatar Korra's time has come to an end. It is time for the Avatar Cycle to begin again.<br/>But Asami Sato isn't so willing to let Korra go through it again, alone. Maybe she's being selfish. Or maybe it's selfless, turning away from death at the last possible moment and fighting through the Spirit World to find away to return to Korra. She loved the Avatar too much for once to be enough.<br/>Asami would make her way back to the Avatar one way or the other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I am the Memories of Us

**Author's Note:**

> Technically everyone in this story is dead already, but I never get into descriptions of how they died so I didn't tag it. Unless the mere mention of death sets you off.  
> Anywho, this is the least plot heavy work I've done in... ever. It is a weird one. I'm not entirely sure how to describe it. But yeah, this is Asami Sato's quest to get reincarnated a la the Avatar, to get back to Korra. Enjoy?  
> (I've been listening to a lot of Massive Attack for this one especially, Paradise Circus so consider that recommended listening for this if you want)

There’s something so endlessly comforting about knowing that the person you loved will still be there the next time around. Even if you’re not. Something about the knowledge that the person you have given so much of yourself, the one that gave back just as much, would continue on. Even if you don’t.

It was also incredibly selfish to want to be the one to love them the next time. To deny someone else the chance to love her. Because you loved her so utterly, so completely, that the thought of anyone else even attempting to seems abhorrent.

Because when she kissed you it wasn’t just flesh meeting flesh, it was souls intertwining and merging into something much more beautiful and deep and meaningful than just the meeting of two people, two bodies.

Or maybe it isn’t selfish. Maybe it is selfless. To walk away from everything, to turn back at the end of all things and brave through the unknown, the pain, the hurt, the longing, all of it, all of it again because you know that you could be the one to soothe her pain just a little bit, just once more. To be the one to take her burdens for a few pleasant moments, to take the world on your shoulders to give her a break because of how much you truly, deeply, completely love her. And you know that you’d do it for no other reward than that stupid little smile she gives you that melts your heart and ignites your soul.

It is selfish to be the only one.

It is selfless to do it anyway.

Selfish and selfless. Neither. Both.

A gentle, delicate balance between the two.

 

All of these were thoughts that had occurred to the woman who looked through the nine hazy, fog wreathed gates of death. She’d thought them for a very long time. They first occurred to her a long time ago, when she first met the love of her life.

The thoughts were with her for most of her life, but they mattered little. Thoughts of an empty future were lost on her while the present was full of love and company and life.

But they became so much more prevalent after the death of her soulmate. After her own death.

An interesting word: soulmate.

Can such a thing ever really exist between an immortal soul of light and a mere mortal? It doesn’t seem like it should.

That question was another that plagued the woman who hesitated before the waters of death. The current tugged at her shins, urging her forward.

Yet this most recent question itself was flawed. It didn’t truly capture the delicate nature of the soul.

Sure she was the reincarnated soul of light destined to master all four elements and bring balance to the world in each lifetime, but that was before. That spirit had been torn from her. She’d lost the spirit of light, but found it again, took it back, fused with it by the sheer strength of her own soul.

So would she be the same person again? After death would she come back as Korra again? Or would it be like before? Would it be the same spirit, but a new personality, a new person?

No, it couldn’t be like it was before. Asami knew that something had changed. Everything had changed. She saw it.

Korra and Raava were one, in separable, one and the same. She knew it would be her again.

Probably.

If there was even a small chance of it being Korra again, even a little bit of that woman, just in the smile or the eyes or her scrappy nature, or even just her love of terribly cheesy jokes, Asami would do it all again just for that one ounce of Korra.

She’d made her decision.

She’d made her decision a long time ago. She’d made it when she walked into the Spirit World with Korra the first time. She’d made that decision again and again, each time she saw the Avatar, each time she said “I love you” outloud. Everything they touched, Asami knew she’d come back for Korra.

She’d made her decision as she held Korra’s had as she died.

Asami Sato wasn’t the first person to turn her back on the dark, mist shrouded waterfall that was the first gateway into death, and she wouldn’t be the last.

Other humans have spent time in the Spirit World, living on as a spirit in this ethereal world.

She wouldn’t even be the first to try and return to life, to gain some sort of immortality reserved only for the truly mad, the insanely desperate, or the Avatar.

She’d be the first to succeed, she knew that much.

Soulmates.

There was some truth to that afterall. Her soul was so close to Korra’s, every time Korra kissed her or loved her she felt their souls touch. And Asami was changed by it, subtly. She was made better, brighter, by Korra’s light.

She’d find a way back to her love one way or the other.

 

The Spirit World itself, Asami had long ago stopped thinking of it as a place and more of an entity, seemed to try and deter her plan of returning to the Avatar.

The Spirit World showed her scenes of her past life. Scenes of pain and hurt.

As an old, frail, grey haired woman, she crossed through Korra's funeral. The sky was dark grey, and a sea of spirits and the memories of humans mourned.

She cried then, and she cried now.

It was the hardest thing she ever had to go through. She was briefly comforted by memories of Bolin and Mako, faded representations of her two friends, both gone before her.

She mourned again, whether for seconds or centuries, moments or months, she couldn't tell.

The Spirit World manifestation of Korra's body, still, lifeless, worn with age and laugh lines, still as beautiful as the day Asami met her; it only reminded her of the love she felt for the Avatar. She felt it deeper than her bones, she felt a yearning for her stitched into the lining of her very being.

She couldn’t remember what the funeral was actually like. Asami cried too much for any details to really stick with her. The only thing she could remember was Korra’s body. And how everything was wrong, nothing would be right again.

Asami walked on, knowing that the only way to see Korra again was to continue, but she bore the sadness with her as she walked. Old bones creaking and sore but eventually giving way to younger muscles and Asami found herself in another memory, almost as sad as losing Korra.

The doctor’s office was cold, sterile and with a dramatic irony that Asami felt exactly the same way. She was told she couldn't bear children.

They had already been denied foster children or adoption due to Korra's position and tendency to get involved in the dangerous affairs of the world. The organized chaos of their life together it seemed to conspire to keep the couple childless. Korra was rightfully afraid of bearing children, she was almost always in some kind of danger, and that would be no position to carry a child. Especially with some new crisis coming up every couple of months that always needed the Avatar. It should have been Asami’s burden to bear and she would have done it willingly and with a smile. But she couldn’t.

At the time Asami felt her world was crumbling away. It was almost like she had no real, tangible hold on her relationship with Korra. Nothing to remind her if, when, Korra dies.

Selfish. Selfless.

But Korra had reminded her of purpose. She played aunt to Bolin's innumerable children. Bolin's brood, Korra referred to them as. Then there was Mako’s daughter that he doted on more than anyone else. Asami told Korra that they’d need to rescue the poor girl from Mako every now and again and to give her some quality girl time. And Korra was essentially mother to the Air Nation, which made Asami a mother-in-law, again she had been reminded by Korra.

Once again the sadness, the pain, the existential hurt that the spirit world was showing her as a very real possibility of going through all of it again, only helped highlight Asami's unconditional, total, soul igniting love she had for the avatar.

She vowed to press on.

She moved forward and found herself looking at a spirit portal, or the memory of a spirit portal. Asami felt the pain of loss, the known loss of a father she'd barely been able to forgive. And all encompassing icy terror of the possibility of losing Korra in the same day. Within hours of each other.

That dread almost killed her. The weight of things yet said forced the air out of her lungs. She couldn't move, she couldn't think, terror was paralyzing. Her muscles were frozen, her soul was frozen.

But then there was that joy at seeing Korra return through the newly created spirit portal. That light saving ray of light when she stepped through.

Asami never felt a roller coaster of emotions quite like that day. She was terrified, exhilarated, horrified, depressed, anxious, joyous, all at once. She was so emotionally exhausted that she could barely restrain herself from sprinting to Korra and declaring all of her feelings for her at that moment.

After that point her journey through the Spirit World seemed to progress faster. But at the same time, it moved at the speed of thought: Lightning fast or slow, long realizations that take place over days or months. Yet in hindsight it was all over in flashes.

The next steps of her journey was a series of flashes of all the times she feared Korra dead, or Korra being severely injured. Korra after being attacked by Amon; Korra poisoned by Zaheer; wheelchair bound Korra; Korra with a broken arm and three broken ribs after the riots in the Earth Nation.

All of that pain and anxiety, the never knowing when it would be the last time she'd see her, when would be the last time she’d tell her that she loved her, that almost broke Asami.

The worry would do what sadness could not. Worry erodes and wears down and kills by millimeters.

But still Asami pressed on. Those times sucked and they were awful, but without them the best of times meant nothing.

Her journey tried one last effort to tear her down by showing her instants of every fight she'd had with Korra. And that just made her laugh.

Every time they fought, and it was never really a fight it was more of a disagreement, they'd make up seconds or hours later. They never ever carried anger with them, they never really truly fought. Sure they argued and disagreed with each other but none of them were ever really serious.

For the truly serious topics where they disagreed, they just talked about it. Really, truly discussed it. No opinion was invalid, no point or side discounted. They might not have always come to an agreement, but they always ended at an understanding.

It also helped that whenever Korra realized she was wrong part way through an argument she wouldn't concede, she'd just starting trying to turn on Asami to make her lose her train of thought. Lots of arguments ended in sex, mostly right there on the floor.

Undeterred, unswayed, encouraged even, Asami pressed forward into the Spirit World. The memories of the bad times behind her, she moved as if in a dream. In one step, or was it a hundred million steps, she had crossed a great distance across a shimmering field of jewel grass covered with flowers made of glass and emotions.

A low sound from beside her caused Asami to realize for the first time she was not alone. A large white animal was next to her.

"Hello Naga," Asami smiled as she pet the head of the great polar bear dog that was Korra's spirit animal.

Naga barked happily and licked Asami's face.

"Did you want to join me? I'm trying to find my way back to Korra."

Naga licked her face, barked happily, and bounded forward. Asami smiled and followed.

Eventually they reached an abrupt stream. A river really, whose rapids seemed to sheer right through the middle of the field. It rushed right through a low hill and continued as if nothing happened on the other side, like it wasn't cut in half by twenty or sixty feet of dark, swirling, reflection less water.

Asami hesitated for the first time.

The only way to continue was to cross the river. But the instant Asami set foot in the river, the water's speed increased, doubled or even tripled. Eddies became whirlpools, tides became undertows, waves grew large and terrifying.

Naga barked from the other side of the river, urging AsamI forward.

Again, she hesitated and the current tugging at her ankles seemed to notice her weakness and lunged at the opportunity.

Her feet were sucked away from her. She had been pulled several feet into the river. She panicked and tried to turn around. Only to find herself in the middle of the river.

Naga was barking worriedly from the other bank.

Asami felt the dark waters trying to push her head under. She felt the urge to stay, to find a way back to Korra leaving her as the air left her body. She was being pulled into the first gate of death that she had turned her back on.

Her willpower was leached from her soul just as the heat was sucked away from her body by the icy water.

"Asami."

For a second she swore she heard her name called from the opposite bank.

It sounded like Korra despite that being impossible. But it solidified her will to stay, her fight to return.

Asami forced her head above water. She took a life reaffirming breath. And with that breath her strength returned.

In life she'd been an excellent swimmer, many hours spent with Korra and water had reinforced her. But here in the Spirit World, in death, it meant nothing. The only thing that could save her was that iron will, that single unconquerable inch that refused to yield to anything in life and wouldn't give in death. She loved the Avatar with every fiber of her being and she'd find a way back.

She reiterated that mantra in her mind over and over, and suddenly she was walking up a bank of the river.

Naga bouncing happily beside her, suddenly the size of a very excited puppy, although still bigger than Asami by a foot.

Warm spirit animal kisses warmed Asami up as she looked behind her and saw no evidence that the river of death had ever been there except for a small series of wet, muddy footprints.

"Let's move on," Asami said to the excited polar bear dog who was just excited for the chance for a walk.

The area of the Spirit World that Asami found herself in then seemed to encourage and support her desire to find a way back to Korra.

Naga led her through happy memories now. Fields of dreams of the best times with Korra.

The first meeting between the two and how icy Korra's initial reaction was. Back then it was disappointing, now it was just funny.

Any of the numerous drives the couple had taken. Korra always taking Asami's hand as they drove through the city, the country, everywhere. Asami loved those drives.

She also caught smells, aromas that floated on spirit wind that brought memories of happiness, love, and Korra. Sweat and pine needles, Korra after a work out. Meat and yeast and spices as Korra made them dinner the first night in their apartment. And of course the pleasant smell of Naga as she was a constant part of Asami's life with Korra.

They walked through the happiest moment in Asami's life: the day Korra finally proposed.

They'd been dating for six years, living together for almost five, and Asami always wondered how to propose to an Avatar. What was the custom for that? Now her worry and apprehension was funny, then it was all encompassing.

She had researched courting rituals from every country. She'd made Korra a Water Tribe betrothal necklace. She'd forged an Earth Kingdom style wedding ring. Then she'd even made the first Fire Nation wedding headdress in two hundred years. Her thought line was that Korra was the Avatar and she was a part of every nation, so she should get something from every nation.

The only problem was the Air Nation custom. She knew better than to ask Tenzin as he would bore her for hours and then tell everyone. She thought it was a better idea to ask Pema, which was a worse idea because Pema told everyone that Asami was thinking of proposing. She remembered the sheer embarrassment. She'd had to give out a lot of favors and threats to make sure no one would tell Korra.

Asami had been positive she'd gotten their silence, but then the very next day as Asami awoke to Korra smiling as she looked at Asami stumbling into wakefulness, the Avatar just asked, "Hey you wanna get married?"

Asami was mortified. "Who told you?"

"What? Told me what?"

"You mean you don't know?"

"Know what? I just asked if you wanted to get married!"

For a second Asami felt that flash of pure happiness that echoed through the memory.

"Of course you dork! But that's how you ask me?"

"What were you planning some whole big shebang?" Korra asked, rueful little smile tugging at her lips.

Asami couldn't help but smile at the same time as her memory. "No..."

"Oh spirits! You totally had this whole big thing planned! And I just completely ruined it!"

"You totally did!" Asami smiled as she kissed Korra. "And you know that I'd marry you in a heartbeat. By not until you do it right, jackass."

Korra smiled back. "Does this mean it's a race? Who can propose properly first?"

"Oh you little tart! That’s not fair!" Asami yelled as she punched Korra gently on the shoulder before leaping out of bed. "Mine has multiple pieces!"

"Are you assembling your own altar?" Korra yelled, still reclining in bed.

"No!" Asami yelled both times, then and now.

Korra still didn't move. "I'm kind of tempted to wait now. I want to see what you have up your sleeve Miss Sato."

"I'm not wearing any sleeves!" Asami yelled as she tried to get all the pieces of her proposal together. The Air Nation one wasn't even completed yet.

Korra stayed in bed, reached into her nightstand and pulled out the Water Tribe betrothal necklace she'd had hidden there. It was only much later that Asami found out that Korra had carved it a few days later after they returned from their first vacation to the Spirit World.

"Aww yes!" Asami felt herself say. "That means I win and I will hold it over you forever! As long as we are married i will get to say that i proposed in this super elaborate fashion before you! Hahahaha!"

That spurred Korra into action. She found Asami in the penthouse kitchen, wearing not much of anything.  On the kitchen table were three pieces of jewelry. One an intricately designed hair piece, another the traditional hand carved Water Tribe necklace, the last a jeweled silver ring.

Then Asami started saying... words. There were lots of ums and errs and stumbling. Korra understood each of the words she said but in a sentence they made no sense. It sounded like poetry, about how much Asami loved her. It rhymed even.

"What the hell is happening?" the Avatar asked.

"Well you're the Avatar, you kind of belong to each nation," Asami explained. "So I made you one of each proposal traditions from each nation. The poetry is Air Nation stuff. I didn't have enough time to write it but less edit."

A deep blush rose from her neck and settled over her cheeks.

"Wow..." Korra breathed. "It kind of puts my little necklace to shame."

Asami smiled shyly. "You gonna marry me Korra?"

"Oh absolutely," she beamed as she closed the distance between them and they embraced. "But I'm telling absolutely everyone about the poetry."

Asami sighed heavily. "Alas, I didn't expect to be such a young widow."

"What?"

"Because I'm going to kill you."

They teased and joked and kissed and adorned each other with their handmade possessions. Asami felt so full of love and happiness at that moment, and in that memory, that she felt like she might explode.

Naga, reflecting Korra's remembered happiness, jumped around happily barking and tail wagging.

"Let's go," Asami smiled as she stepped out of memory-Korra's embrace.

The woman and the dog walked through entire forests of happy memories. It took a lifetime to traverse them all.

But once again, it was over in a blink.

The river had returned. The black waters that reflected no light, ripped through the world in front of Asami.

"I have to go through it again, don’t I?" she asked the spirit animal.

Naga whined but pushed Asami forward gently with her nose.

The river of death looked more imposing and dangerous than it did before. Even through her desire to reunite with Korra was stronger than ever, the river still instilled a primal sense of fear across the surface of her scalp.

"Any chance you can help me out?" Asami asked Naga.

The dog looked at Asami and whined, then looked at the river and whined some more. Her tail was no longer wagging, and she paced back and forth at the precipice of the river.

"It's ok," Asami smiled sadly. "I get it. I have to do this myself. You've already traveled the river once. I shouldn't have asked you to do it again."

Naga whined once more as she looked up at Asami who was steeling her resolve to forge across the river of death.

With one great paw placed on Asami's chest and a lick to her face, Asami felt the love from the Avatar's spirit animal seep into her. That kind of animal instinctual love, the kind Naga shared  and mirrored from Korra.

All at once Asami felt better, more like herself. Stronger even. With such a strong emotional reminder of what Korra felt for her, Asami stepped into the river, Naga having vanished.

The current didn't seem as strong or as fierce as it did before. Asami moved through the waters of death with ease, and before she even knew it she reached the other side.

Her conviction remained untouched: she was Asami Sato and she was going to get back to the Avatar she knew she loved so much.


	2. I am Nothing but Reflections of You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Asami gets some advice from an old friend, and enters the Labyrinth of Reflections. If she makes it through she'll be so much closer to reuniting with the Avatar in life. If she doesn't she'll be lost forever, and possibly insane.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I suggest listening to Windmills of Your Mind by Noel Harrison

When she emerged from the crossing of the river of death, the sky had turned dark black. Night had fallen suddenly.

There were no stars in the Spirit World. No moon, no light of any kind.

Asami felt a deep and profound sadness. She felt like something was gone, taken from her too soon.

“Hey, you lost?” asked a voice from behind her.

She whipped around, not being able to see very much in the total darkness that seemed to eclipse the whole world.

A soft blue light was emanating from a couple of feet away.

“It’s good to see you again Asami,” smiled Korra.

“Korra! You’re here!” Asami said as she practically leapt into Korra’s arms. “Is it really you?”

The Avatar embraced Asami back.

“Yeah, it’s really me, but I don’t have much time,” she said.

It was strange to look at her. With one eye Asami saw Korra as she remembered her, Korra as the young hot headed Avatar who fought the Equalists, the twenty two year old who took her into the Spirit World for the first time on vacation, the middle aged woman she’d spent every night with. But with the other eye she saw a scarred and angry looking young man. She couldn’t see him as anything older than a teenager, but he already looked so much older and bitter.

“I missed a life with you didn’t I?” Asami asked sadly.

“Yeah. The Earth Nation is kind of having a bit of a class war. I think I stopped most of it. I think,” Korra muttered. “But enough about that, I’ve heard about your little quest.”

“Are you here to stop me? To tell me to move on?” Asami asked with several hints of bitterness.

“No! Of course not,” her voice was Korra’s and not Korra’s. It was the Water Tribe girl and the Earth Nation boy at the same time. Listening to it was like listening to an echo that didn’t repeat everything exactly. “I wanted to help guide you. I missed you last time around. I was lost without you. I didn’t have an anchor. I needed you.”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t be there for you.”

“If you want to find me next time, you’ll need to harden your soul. You’ll have to become the purest form of Asami you’ve ever been. Don’t let anything change you.”

“How do I do that?”

Korra pointed to a far off region of the darkness that encompassed the Spirit World. “You’ll have to make it through the Labyrinth of Reflections. It is a place that even the spirits fear to go.”

“Why? What is down there?”

“Sorry, my time’s almost up,” Korra said looking to the sky. “I only have enough time to tell you that I love you.”

The Avatar’s spirit kissed the woman who didn’t die and suddenly disappeared.

The instant that Korra was gone a comet flew across the sky. It was a ball of pure white light that arced across the black abyss of the Spirit World sky. It ignited the stars as it went by.

In just a few seconds light had returned to the Spirit World as the comet exploded into a sun for several moments, and Asami felt a growing sense of happiness. She knew that the Avatar had been reborn and the cycle was starting again.

The sun vanished and Korra’s spirit was gone.

Daylight returned to the Spirit World and Asami saw the structure that Korra told her about. Even from where she was, what felt like several miles away, the area was massive, tall and imposing, long and seeming to stretch on into forever. The whole area seemed to be shrouded, but not with mist or haze. It just looked like what she was seeming was subtly changing, shifting, like muscles seen moving under skin.

Asami shivered and pressed on.

It felt like she walked towards the Labyrinth for years.

When she finally reached it, the walls on the outside were the greyish-blue color of hazy, half forgotten memory.

There was a doorway carved, or, as it looked more accurately, removed from the stone.

“Heehee,” cackled a broken and wheezy voice. “It has been so long since someone has come to test the Labyrinth.”

Asami turned to see an faceless man sitting completely surrounded by small dolls.

His face was just skin. No eyes, no nose, no mouth. Just a bunch of straggly grey hair sitting on top of his head. The voice sounded like it came from him, but there was no lips.

“What do you mean?”

“Heehee,” he wheezed again. “Not many people come to this place anymore.”

He picked up one of the small dolls. It looked like it was dressed as a Fire Nation general of some sort. A military man in a uniform. When he touched it his stature changed, he sat up straighter, and his mouthless voice changed to that deep voiced, booming tone of a commander.

“Not many wish to be tested by the Labyrinth. They are afraid of who they are, or who they were,” he said before setting down the little doll and picking up another an elegantly dressed woman with a fan. Again his position changed, he sat more open, wider as if he challenged Asami to do something. “The Labyrinth of Reflections mirrors many things. Not all of them pleasant, not all of them real, not all of them from our world.”

“What do you mean?”

He put down the piece and returned to the tottering old man. “Our reality is but a fiction. One of many. Only the truly desperate come here. Hehehe, or the truly mad. Have you ever had a voice in your head telling you that something wasn’t really real? In the Labyrinth you’ll find voices you didn’t even know you had. One voice, two voices, a hundred, a dozen! Hehehe. You’ll find them all in the this little Labyrinth of Reflections. And you’ll go mad, like me. Or more mad it seems. Hehehe. You see I collected all my voices or most of them. This one’s my favorite,” he said as he pointed to an arrow headed bald man. “Or is he my least favorite?”

“Has anyone ever come out of the maze?”

He picked up the airbender doll, and shifted into a familiar meditating pose. “Of course, but they never come out in one piece. They usually come out in several. Then again, there are the people who just never come out again.”

“You’ve been… very informative, thank you,” Asami said as she returned her gaze to the front of the Labyrinth of Reflections.

“Hehehe, no I haven’t. You know nothing Princess. Nothing at all.”

Asami ignored him, and the creeping fear that as starting to press in around her. She steeled herself for a moment and stepped into the Labyrinth of Reflections.

The instant she crossed the threshold, the gateway behind her was gone. But she didn’t notice. She was to press forward, not backward. Her desire to press forward was also helped by her sense that something was following her, just on the edges of her vision. Something was tracking her.

The key to returning to Korra was in this maze, and she was going to find it.

The labyrinth’s walls were entirely made up of mirrors. Some were pure shining silver. Others rippled like they were made of liquid metal. Others were just highly polished bronze. Some were badly cracked, others looked as pure and unbroken as they day they were made.

Not all of them reflected Asami though. Some reflected her as she saw herself in the prime of her life. Others reflected Asami as a toddler, or an old woman, or an awkward teenager.

But some of them didn’t even reflected version of her either. Some reflected nothing, just other mirrors. Some reflects shadows, dozens of them walking across the surface, forever lost in the maze. Still others reflected nothing but void, pure, total, all encompassing, rippling darkness.

She pressed forward. The maze was unlike any maze Asami had ever seen. There straight angles and sloping gentle turns. It was spiraling and ninety degree turns all at once.

Only once did she ever try to turn around and backtrack. But that proved fruitless as the labyrinth seemed to change around her. She’d become more lost than she was before she had turned around.

After walking for what felt like weeks, Asami found herself at a dead end. It was the only one she’d ever encountered in the maze.

It also held a person, the only one she’d ever seen inside.

She was a relatively averaged sized woman, with dark hair and harsh golden eyes.

“And just who do you think you are?” she asked.

The woman’s clothes suggested Fire Nation. But they were old, a hundred years out of date at least.

“I’m Asami Sato,” she answered confidently.

“I don’t know you, what are you doing here?”

“I could ask the same of you. You look like you’ve been here a long time. You’re clothes haven’t been seen in over a hundred years.”

“Watch who you speak to with that tone, peasant,” the woman said confidently. “I am Princess Azula. I am the daughter of Phoenix Lord Ozai. I was Earth Queen and Fire Lord before the Avatar robbed me of those titles. I was a tool of destruction for my father and look what it got me.”

Suddenly the vision of Azula shifted and she went from the dangerous and confident young woman before Asami to the mad and disheveled woman who was dethroned by her brother standing in a confining straight jacket, before she shifted to a weary and broken old woman.

“So what are your wounds caused by the Avatar?”

“None. She helped me heal from my wounds, and I helped her.”

“You helped the Avatar? Oh you are a weak one aren’t you?”

“No. I loved Korra and I was made stronger for it. She helped me when I turned against my father. She helped me when I lost everything. She was my friend and my wife and I love her still.”

“You too were used by your father? Turned into a weapon of war?”

Asami nodded. “I lost my mother to benders, my father turned into an Equalist, a terrorist. He tried to have me help him, but I refused, with help from Korra.”

Azula tilted her head slightly, to get a different look at Asami. “Hm… Perhaps there is more to you than I thought.”

Asami nodded, quietly waiting to see what the former enemy of Avatar Aang would do.

“I grow weary of traversing this place alone. Perhaps I will follow you until you grow wearisome and then I’ll leave you alone here forever,” Azula said.

All at once the dead end ceased to be a real dead end, and Azula disappeared.

Before Asami could question it, she felt that sense of creeping, unavoidable fear stalking her from the sides of vision.

She turned around and saw nothing.

Reflections of her as she was, as she is, and who she will be mirrored her actions, as did reflections of all of the possible Azulas. Looking at the numerous reflections made her nauseous, and there was still that stalking dread feeling that was crawling up her spine.

Instead of thinking about it, and the whispers of Azula in her mind, she pressed forward.

The Labyrinth continued in front of her for years. Every now and again she’d turn a corner and be criticized internally by Azula who insisted they should have gone the other way.

Eventually they came to another dead end, this time there was an older looking man standing there. He was wearing extremely dated Earth Kingdom regalia. He looked like someone important, a Major perhaps, given his greying beard.

He saluted her and said, “I am Major Naoki Kagome. I was an officer for the glorious Earth Kingdom during the war with the Fire Nation.”

“I remember reading about him,” Azula’s voice echoed from somewhere. “He spent the last years of his life on a desperate search for the Avatar. Kind of reminds me of Zuko, with less scarring of course.”

“Why did you search for the Avatar for so long?” Asami asked.

“The world needed him, we needed him. The war with the Fire Nation was a battle of attrition. We’d lose eventually. But the Avatar… he could have restored balance. That’s why I went looking.”

“Well Aang, when he was found, did stop the Fire Nation and restore balance,” Asami informed him.

“Oh, very good,” Naoki said with a slight bow. “Would you care for some company? This place is strange and twisting.”

“Sure, I could use some help,” Asami said.

And just as before with Azula, the path before her opened immediately and Major Naoki disappeared.

The creeping fear was combining unpleasantly with her growing headache. As each one grew, they fed a deeper and more existential terror deep within Asami. She felt like she was starting to lose herself to these people. She was starting to let their voices creep into her own thoughts.

Every now and again she’d feel Azula’s slightly mad and bitter thoughts as her own, or the desperate and lost thoughts of the Major.

In that moment she understood Korra’s warning that she’d have to harden her soul. These intruders were going to make it difficult.

As if the Labyrinth of Reflections detected her growing uncertainty, she started to encounter more and more people.

“I was one of the Fire Nation soldiers that raided the Southern Air Temple. I helped ensure that the Avatar was never reborn into the Air Nation and helped solidify the might of the glorious FIre Nation.”

“I was the Southern Water Tribe leader who rebelled against the Avatar and his desire to rule both tribes.”

“I was in love with the Avatar, but I mean she was the Avatar, and I was just a lowly air acolyte. I don’t think she ever knew. I stood up at her wedding.”

“I was unifying the land! I was taking the people and giving them form and structure and a better life under my iron handed rule! That was until that damn Avatar killed me.”

She found more and more people. Some were friends of the Avatar, most of them were enemies or minor antagonists of the Avatar and balance. Was that who she was? Often enemies of the Avatar, rarely friends, only once a lover?

Each one increased her headache and that dwindling sense of self. She was starting to feel her own identity slipping, merging, reflecting the others. Which one was she again? Which one of them stepped into the maze first? Which one was trying to get back? Which one of them still had something to lose?

She was certain that something was following her through the maze. She couldn’t see it, it was just beyond her peripheral vision. It was like some shadow or a spider, that would vanish in a trick of the light.

More of the mirrors starting reflecting things that weren’t there or never were, strange impossible things. Korra in strange clothings, Korra stuck in classrooms looking bored, Korra as a fighter, Korra as a boxer. She thought she saw herself in these reflections of worlds that never were, but she could no longer recognize herself.

Every step she took was a concentrated effort. The voices in her head, her voices, were telling her to turn back, find a way out before it was too late.

Her hands weren’t her hands anymore. They were an Earth Nation general’s, a Fire Nation princess’, an air acolyte’s.

She felt nauseous and afraid. Something was coming for her. It was starting to push against the walls of the Labyrinth. The mirrors were containing it, were not containing it.

This place made it so hard to think, to rationalize.

The only way out was forward she told herself, she told the people following her.

Some nodded in agreement, others shook their heads, some argued, others pressed on.

“My name is Asami Sato and I love the Avatar,” she forced herself to say out loud. She tried to reaffirm her sense of self, but what she heard back was a series of echoes that seemed to mock her.

“My name is Azula, daughter of Ozai, and I hate the Avatar.”

“My name is Naoki Kagome, and I need to find the Avatar.”

Each echo was someone else speaking, and she couldn’t be entirely sure that she wasn’t the one that said it outloud.

Her head was pounding, pushed in from a thousand different directions. Squeezed through a vice made of a hundred different people.

She tried to run from it, to escape the thoughts, escape the reflections, escape the Labyrinth. She turned corners blindly, running in random directions, but she never seemed to get any further than the maze wanted her to get. She tried to touch a mirror, just to get a feeling of something that was real, but the mirrors were always just barely out of reach. Not once could she touch their surface, no matter how much she walked towards them.

Just as she was about to collapse, to give up and give in and accept her fate of being one of the people lost in the Labyrinth of Reflections forever, she found herself at one last dead end.

“And who are you?” asked the person who was standing in the dead end.

“I am…” she started, but the words failed her as her headache spiked. It felt like she had hundreds of voices all shouting their names at once.

The tall, pale woman before her waited patiently. Her dress was unlike any that Asami had ever seen. It was beautiful, but it looked ancient.

“I…” she tried again, but her own voice was drowned out by the shouting of dozens of reflections.

“Yes?”

“I was Asami Sato,” she said, and the voices all quieted down once the realization dawned on her about what this Labyrinth really was, who these people were, what she was. “I was Azula. I was Naiko. I was Chou, and Tuyen, and Yoshiro, and all the rest. They were my past lives.”

“That is a series of names,” the woman said patiently. “I asked who you are.”

She balked. For a moment she was speechless, she thought she figured out the great mystery of this place. But apparently that wasn’t all there was to it. She had admitted to doing awful, horrible things in some of her past lives. She’d accepted it, or accepted as much of it as she possibly could.

But who did that make her now?

“I don’t know,” she slipped out.

“I am Manami,” the woman spoke. “And I was here long before any of you.”

“What was your story?”

“I lived in the lion turtle city that Avatar Wan came from. I watched his actions from a far, judging, wishing I had the strength to be like him. My father was one of the most powerful people in the city. He exploited the people, and their fear of the Spirit Wilds. I watched Wan stand up to them over and over. I watched him from a distance and wished I could help, but I feared my father.”

“Were you friends with him?”

“I doubt he even knew I existed.”

“What was the point of all of this then?” she asked aloud.

Manami just looked on patiently.

“I did some pretty horrible things in my life, in past lives. It seemed like I was enemies with the Avatar more times than I was friends with them. There was only once that I ever actually got to love the Avatar and that is why I’m here, why all of me is here, because I loved Korra too much to let her go, even to death. I have the opportunity for great disaster and tragedy, but also the opportunity for great peace and balance. The same as everyone else. All I’m asking for is a chance. Just a chance to do it again, to find her, love her, give her everything I have. Just a chance to do it again."

“I see,” Manami said. “You are the first person to reach the end of the Labyrinth. I only hope that you obtained what you sought.”

The woman vanished and joined in the infinite number of reflections that followed her through the Labyrinth.

Gone was the stalking sense of dread, the terror in her gut, and the enormous headache. But also gone was any sense of where to go. The dead end remained dead.

The only thing before her was a single expansive mirror.

Its polishing, shining surface was untouched, unblemished, and it reflected only Asami Sato.

For a moment, she just stared at her own reflection. She could have sworn she wasn’t wearing Fire Nation clothing before.

When did she tie her hair up?

When did she get a beard?

Wasn’t she just in Fire Nation garb a second ago, when did it become an acolyte uniform?

She tried to fight against what she was seeing, what she was feeling happening inside her, but it was to no avail.

She felt all of them inside her, all those identities fighting for control, not wanting to be the first one forgotten.

It was all too much for her and she fell to the ground.

The cracks she was feeling on her soul from the battle inside her, seemed to translate to the mirror before her.

At first it was a small chip, something tiny and easily missed. A little doubt in who she was. Just the smallest little doubt in the back of her mind.

Then a large crack emanated where she could see the face of the first life she lived, or was it who she was, the tall woman with the dark hair? The mirror started to crack more rapidly. Large splinters of glass fell off of it as the mirror looked like it was being beaten down from the other side of the mirror. Like something on the other side was trying to get out.

With one more silent bash against the mirror, the whole thing shattered into a million pieces, showering her with shards.

She covered her face from the glass, but that wasn’t what it her.

What came through the mirror was an immense tidal wave, a giant inky black wave of water.

The river of death had found her and would not be denied.

She had no time to scream as her air was replaced by the icy cold plunge into the water that would carry her to the first gate a beyond.

It was all over for her.

She could feel the personalities in her soul being stripped away the more she tried to fight against the river that had swept her out of the Labyrinth of Reflections.

This was how she was going to die, after all this work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter and the fic in general was very loosely based off of this tumblah post: http://glamourweaver.tumblr.com/post/111638887355/i-wonder-about-reincarnation-in-the-avatar  
> So plot twist Asami was Azula last time around!  
> This was an... interesting chapter to write. I hope it was as at least as interesting to read. Also I love leaving cliff hangers! Next time the finale! [/rambles]


	3. This is Me and This is You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Who are you when everything you've had is stripped from you? What is left at the end of all things? Asami Sato, who are you now?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we go, the big ending. What exactly is carried over when a soul reincarnates? How much of your personality comes from the soul? Is who I am physical or spiritual? Is there even a difference?  
> All these questions and more I bring up but didn't have an answer to!  
> Recommended listening: In Your World (Live at Le Zenith) - Muse - Hullabaloo Soundtrack

She no longer knew which way was up.

The cold was leeching her soul away. Every couple of seconds she lost a voice to the icy embrace of the river of death.

Then all of a sudden she resisted.

“No!” the voices inside her cried, she cried. She would not surrender, not now, not after all of this.

One of her Water Tribe past lives pointed her head towards the surface before death snatched him away.

Several of her lives gave her the strength to push upwards before their fires were snuffed out by the river.

She broke the surface of the river with a mighty effort, and took a deep breath of life giving air.

The river was not about to go down without a fight. The waves grew larger, the whirlpools more intense. It was like trying to swim through a hurricane. The river was doing its best to lay claim to what was rightful its: her life.

For a moment she swore she heard Azula curse the river, “No little creek will be the downfall of a Fire Nation Princess!”

She swam forward, pushed through the waves. It was like swimming through tar. Every action sapped her of her strength. Every minute stripped away her soul of something, someone, vital to her.

But still she pushed forward. There was so much she had left to do, she had to get back to the Avatar.

The current became nothing to her as she forced herself forward, but every moment in the river was a nightmare, each moment sapped away something necessary inside her. The river was changing her, eroding pieces of her away like she were a stone. Her body didn't feel like her own any more.

Just when she felt there was no more left to lose of herself, she was at the shore, she climbed onto the shores of the Spirit World and collapsed.

How long she lay there, she didn’t know. Her entire body was heavy, her limbs were like metal, her chest was tired from her desperate, heavy breathing. But when she felt up to moving, she felt like she had lost something.

Simply sitting up was a challenge, and standing felt like the most titanic effort her legs have ever been asked to do.

And then the world went black.

The Spirit World seemed sapped of its color, of its light.

“Asami?” a quiet voice next to her caused her to turn.

She turned and saw the pale blue outline of the Avatar, now a severe looking older woman dressed in the Fire Nation robes she would have been born into.

“Hey,” she said quietly, not quite feeling the words on her still numb lips. “I’m sorry I’m taking so long. I… I’m beginning to think I made the wrong choice. I never regretted a moment we had together, never. But did I make the wrong decision? Is it actually just time for me to move on?”

“You look different,” the voice that was and was not Korra’s said. “Asami, I feel wrong. I feel out of balance. I’m starting to forget what you looked like.”

“Korra… I’m sorry. I don’t know what to do now.”

“I miss you,” the Avatar said, her eyes filling with tears. “It’s not the same. I don’t know how to get you back to me, and I’m sorry. I needed you.”

“I know, I need you too. I’m trying, I’m trying so hard, but I don’t know what else I have to do. I don’t know what to do with myself.”

“I can feel myself being pulled back, but I don’t want to leave you.”

“Korra, please, help me.”

But the light of the Avatar dissolved and once again the comet began its ascent across the sky.

She felt tears leaving her eyes. Were they even her eyes or were they someone else’s?

The Avatar’s spirit streaked across the sky and she felt her own soul calling out to it. She wanted so desperately to follow that light, to reflect it back and show the Avatar, her one true loved, what she meant to her, what she meant to the world.

Her soul felt like it was trying to escape the confines her body, to follow Korra across the sky.

And that was when she understood. It was never about holding on to who she was, it was about letting herself go. She’d been thinking about it wrong this whole time. The soul, the spirit, was never something physical. This whole time she’d been so attached to her body as her sense of self. The soul, the soul she shared with so many different bodies, was so much more than the physical form of Asami Sato. She defined who she was, not her the body she was given through happenstance and genetics. Asami had to surrender thoughts of herself based on height, her weight, hair color, complexion, gender, sexuality. She couldn’t go back to Korra with this physicality, it was impossible. She couldn’t be afraid of losing herself, the image she held. Sometimes there were more important things. She had to let go.

She took a deep breath and left her physical identity behind. It was like she was literally shedding her skin. Finally, free of the constraints of the body, the soul of Asami Sato was free.

It carried with it all of her fierceness, her determination, her intelligence, her cunning, her savvy, her wit, and her love for the Avatar in whatever incarnation.

For the first time the blazing star of the Avatar didn’t cross the sky alone. It was followed by a much smaller, but no less determined light. A moon to the Avatar’s sun.

The soul followed the pathway carved by the Avatar, and admittedly it was difficult the first time, finding its way blindly through the void.

It almost seemed like the light from the Avatar made the pathway easier, like it was reaching out, helping to guide the lost little soul.

Then like a candle being snuffed out, it was over.

The sensations were overwhelming.

For almost four years everything was a hazy blur, a dream of infancy and childhood. Her conscious mind never realized it, but her soul knew she was back in life and it filled her with a great desire.

She had to find the Avatar.

 

* * *

 

 

A troubled young woman sat in the mostly empty train station. She rubbed her head in frustration. The top of her head was covered in the lightest of hair, little more than cherry-peach fuzz.

The light blue arrow tattoos were still incredibly vivid, as they were barely weeks old, against her naturally tanned skin. The woman was a self-described mutt. Her mother was Water Tribe and Fire Nation, where she inherited her skin tone and eye color. But her father was a second generation Air Bender from the Earth Nations, and she inherited her strong, muscular build from him. In hindsight it was pretty obvious she’d be the Avatar. She was a part of every nation.

The Air Nomad was living up to her name. This would be the fifth time she’s ran away from the Eastern Air Temple.

She couldn’t explain it. Not to the monks, not to her friends, not to herself. She felt out of balance, out of whack. Something was missing inside and she couldn’t find it. She couldn’t find it at the Air Temple. Something told her that she had to find it out in the world.

So she left her family, and friends, and flying bison behind. She’d only been gone a few hours. It wasn’t even dawn yet, so no one would even notice that she was gone. But she already missed them all. As much as she would have liked to stay she couldn't bring herself to sit by in silent agony. She'd surrendered part of herself to wanderlust, to that impossible quest of finding something she knew she was missing but didn't know what it was.

“Mind if I sit?”

The air nomad shook her head, not bothering to look up. Despite rising early everyday for almost seventeen years, she still couldn’t get the hand of mornings.

A body descended into the chair next to her.

The air nomad’s mind was briefly filled with annoyance. It was five in the morning. There was almost no one in the station, this person could have sat anywhere at all.

Then she looked up.

Next to her sat a dark skinned beauty. She had long, flowing brown hair and green eyes the lit up when the air nomad looked at her.

The newcomer had noticed the tattooed woman the instant she stepped into the station. She stood out like a beacon of light calling out safe harbor to ships lost in a storm.

She’d bought a ticket on a whim, it had been a long time since she’d been back home. Ba Sing Se was where she was born eighteen years ago, and she had little reason to return. But for whatever reason the expansive city called to her like the first winds of spring.

The Air Nomad was almost bald, with her freshly acquired tattoos on full display. She was incredibly fit looking, and of a darker complexion than most nomads. Her deep blue eyes studied the mysterious woman’s green.

“I have I met you before?” the nomad asked. “Because I see you but I don’t recognize your face and I still feel like I know you from somewhere.”

Their hearts leapt in their chest, their souls strained against their bodies, trying to elicit a touch between the two.

“I don’t think so, but I feel like I’ve known you my entire life,” the second woman said. “Hi, I’m Yasuko.”

The nomad smiled and shook the woman’s hand. She instantly fell in love with the feel of her hands.

“Hi, I’m Mila, I’m the Avatar.”

“A pleasure to meet you Avatar Mila. What brings you to Ba Sing Se?”

“What do you mean?”

“The only trains this early are the commuter trains to Ba Sing Se. What kind of Avatar Business has you going to the great capital?”

“I left to find something,” she muttered.

Yasuko smiled and stood up, “Well Avatar, you look like you’re about to fall asleep. What if I bought you a cup of coffee? You can tell me all about what you are looking for, and maybe I’ll help you find it.”

She blushed and rubbed the back of her head in a familiar nervous gesture. “Please, it’s just Mila to you. And that sounds perfect actually. But I have the strangest feeling that I might have found it already.”

 

* * *

 

 

At some point, no one can specifically point to when, the stories changed. There was always the one and only Avatar, but then the stories starting referring to the two of them. The Avatar and their companion.

The Avatar was always a singular entity, but now it was hard to separate the Avatar from their partner, their support, their friend and lover.

Those in Spirit World stopped remembering a time when only one star would stream through the sky. They barely even remember the times when the star that would follow the Avatar's soul was smaller and slower.

It was like it had always been that way, two people, two souls, one cycle, one balance.

No one, not even the Avatar, could remember a time that they went through it alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well that was a trip. I'm sorry for the Peter Jackson-esque multiple endings I've got going on. I just had the image of the train station and the air bending master with the little peach fuzz hair cut waiting for a train and I had to include it. Then I liked the idea of the two of them going for so long together that the stories started to change in their telling, like it wasn't just since Korra that there were two, it was always that way... right?  
> So yeah, that happened. And now we've finished this short, very weird, story that has been plaguing my brain. Let me know if it worked, didn't work, kinda sorta vaguely worked. (although I will say I am very proud of chapter 2 and everything to do with the Labyrinth)  
> If you want to send me prompts or insults or that song you have stuck in your head: abronzeagegod.tumblr.com

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know what you think about this. It was an experience writing it. As I'm sure it is reading it.  
> Also I stole (i.e. its a huge obvious reference) the gates of death thing from Garth Nix's Abhorsen series (Sabriel, Lariel, Abhorsen, Clariel) which are utterly fantastic and you should all read them. (Badass ladies who are necromancers and fight death and have magic and awesome talking animal pals and go willingly into death to fight evil. Yeah, it's fucking sweet)  
> There are two more chapters to this and they are all fairly lengthy, so I'll get to posting them at some point.


End file.
